Physical Education

PE at Hetton Primary School

At Hetton, we recognise the importance of physical education and its impact on children physically, as well as socially, emotionally and psychologically. Our children are part of a child-centred, holistic and inclusive approach to the teaching of PE. 

The multi-ability approach that we follow each term engages children in cooperative learning and provides them with the key skills that they need, not only in PE, but within the wider curriculum and in everyday life. With a deep focus on fundamental movement skills (balance, agility and coordination), our PE lessons challenge and allow our children to become skilful, active learners who are physically competent and able to excel in a broad range of physical activities, strive for personal best and welcome healthy competition.

In relation to this, our children have various opportunities to compete in sport and other activities, which build character and help to embed essential values, such as: fairness, respect and the ability to celebrate their own success as well as that of others. 

Additionally, across the 2023/2024 academic year the children will access a health related fitness session as one of their PE sessions within a term. This is due to the fitness issues which staff have identified within PE sessions since returning to a full time curriculum offer after the pandemic. Y2, 3 and 4 will access this across Autumn 1 and it will then be reviewed ready for the Spring term 2024. 

What would a typical PE Lesson look like? 

At Hetton Primary, each class is allocated two hours of timetabled PE per week. Within all PE lessons, teachers adopt a child-led approach, allowing children to personalise their learning as much as possible, with a greater focus on personal best alongside healthy competition.  

Teachers create a dialogue between themselves and the children, which creates opportunities for pace and direction to be dictated by individual learners. Teachers ensure clear, personalised outcomes are shared and agreed upon; success is achievable for all with appropriate challenge and support available; verbal and non-verbal praise is given for positive behaviours (in relation to physical activity and health and fitness, as well as in relation to their wider abilities - e.g. personal, social, creative and cognitive); opportunities to celebrate and review progress, will be seen through a mixture of teacher/peer/self support/dialogue; and opportunities for children to coach, observe and learn from one another.  

Overall, lessons are skill-based, with the main focus being on the fundamental skills of balance, coordination and agility.  

Due to staff and pupil feed back  regarding their PE sessions, we have decided to follow the REAL PE scheme in full across Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1, but in Key Stage 2 we will merge 2 REAL PE units together to develop the skills embedded within earlier years and look to apply these skills more into traditional sporting activities to ensure that out pupils are offered a wide range of sporting activities to ensure that our PE offer caters for all pupils and ensures that pupils have the opportunity to explore and develop out of school links with less popular sports to football and dancing which seems to be the biggest out of school uptake in local clubs. 

Where are resources and lessons planned from? 

Teachers use the Real PE planning resources to teach the REAL PE curriculum. They have access to long-term and short-term planning with a range of skills, application activities, ideas on supporting and challenging children, and ideas for review accessible to them. Teachers also have access to the Real PE online platform, where these resources can be used to deliver interactive, high-quality lessons.

Staff have the freedom to enrich their REAL PE sessions with other year group outcome based PE skills. In all of our PE lessons, our teachers can use the support from Real PE  as well as their own expertise, knowledge and skills.  This ensures that our children are receiving a bespoke curriculum to suit the needs of each child. 

We aim to develop the introduction to and provision of more traditional sporting activities within our KS2 PE sessions; this may be in connection with an upcoming festival or competitive event (linked to the Sunderland Service Level Agreement and Lambton and Hetton Football League). Each year group has a timetabled 'traditional sport' which will be planned to incorporate Real PE outcomes such as developing personal best challenges, team work ethic or supporting other pupils in developing theirs or others skills and tactics within games (see long term plan planning document.)

All children from Year 1-6 will attend swimming lessons for one term per year with the aim of being able to swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres by the end of year 6. Those Year 5 and 6 pupils who are struggling to meet the minimum expectations at the end of Key Stage 2 will be given access to additional swimming sessions in the summer term.